Apologia pro Verbis Suis

At first, it seemed that Senator J. William Fulbright was apologizing. In a talk to the National Press Club in Washington last week (his first appearance in his 23 years in Washington), he expressed "regret" for an earlier speech in which he had called Saigon "literally and figuratively an American brothel"--a charge he repeated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But then he went on to argue that the press had misinterpreted him.

"I sometimes find, after making a speech," he said, "that my central point or idea has been ignored and I find myself embroiled in a silly controversy over some minor observation which could as well have been left out of the speech. I think you have responsibility for conveying the essence of messages and not just those parts which lend themselves to controversy." As for the brothel remark, said Fulbright, it was intended to illustrate the "general proposition that rich and strong nations have a powerful impact on small and weak ones. Frankly, it never occurred to me that a brief summary of an article by Neil Sheehan in the New York Times would attract such widespread interest."

All of this seemed to suggest that, like a caricature of the paper's advertising campaign, Fulbright thought he had been jobbed by the Times. But Sheehan had merely described the prostitution in Saigon; he had hardly gone so far as to characterize the whole city as a brothel. It took Fulbright to make that assumption--and irritate his supporters as well as his detractors. "Saigon is no more an American brothel, literally or figuratively, than was Seoul, Berlin, Rome or wartime London," said the New Republic, which generally goes along with the Senator's criticism of U.S. foreign policy. Fulbright's simplistic generalizations, added the magazine, are a "sad indication of what Viet Nam has done to us all."

Still, as far as the press was concerned, a half-apology from Fulbright was a whole lot more than was expected. "By his public expression of regret over recent unfortunate remarks," editorialized the Washington Post, "Senator Fulbright has redeemed part of the damage to himself and to the country. The words of the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are inevitably regarded over much of the world as important statements of policy. The surest safeguard against misunderstanding is for the chairman to be doubly careful that he does not say what he does not mean."

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